You Found Me
by secretpen28
Summary: When you've been lost all of your life, can you ever be found? Sure, of course you can, but sometimes in life, you're found just a little too late... Rated T for language.


**A/N: I wrote this story 2 or 3 months ago and based it off of no one in particular, but I re-read it recently and saw a correlation between a Camp Rock character. (I won't tell you which one) :) Anyways, if you've never read one of my stories before, they are all based on songs, but instead of placing the lyrics between paragraphs, in my stories I weave them into the story so that you can get an idea of how the writer MAY HAVE come up with the song. My challenge for you is to guess which Camp Rock character I see in my mind while reading this. I would appreciate reviews, but they aren't necessary. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own "You Found Me" by The Fray or any characters involved in this story. **

**You Found Me**

_To: You_

_From: Me_

You,

It's the feelings I feel that have sent me here, that have left me here, alone, stranded. It's the worries encompassing my brain that have kept me from leaving already, that have kept me from departing this hellish world that keeps me within vines that trap me, that make me unable to escape.

The story preceding this moment, this letter, is unfathomably sad, unfathomably unfortunate, unfathomably unfathomable. My life is not worth mentioning because, is it at all worth it? Is anything in this life, in my life, even worth mentioning? One day it's here, the next day, gone... In my case, it was only gone, never fully within my grasp, never fully mine.

It's the competition around me. It's the noise, wait, maybe the lack there of noise that makes me scream. It's the visions that keep me alive, sane, living. It's what I've lived for for years; it's all that matters now: the competition, the noise, the visions, until, until, nothing else mattered at all, until all that was left was me. Me against the world.

The anger within began before time, before I had even been warned that it had started. We all start off alive, but when we're born, the seconds until our death begin to tick down. It's unfair. I never knew. I never knew that my time had started and if I had known, maybe things would be different. Maybe I wouldn't be writing this letter. Maybe my life wouldn't be as fucked up as it is. Maybe... Screw it, it's not worth it anymore. The maybes will never make up for what is, will never make up for the person I am. They'll never make up for the lost time. They'll never make up for the time I never knew, the time **no one **ever knew even existed. See, the funny thing is, the ironic thing is, I'm like time. I'm like time. Because like time, no one knew I existed and now, you're the only one that does, and it's too late.

It sucks knowing how many things in the world are preventable. How many minuscule things matter in someone's life. I remember the first smile in my memory. It was a girl's smile, a smile that radiated my life. I was in 8th grade. It was October. It was sunny and there she was, laughing with her friends, her smile capturing my attention and never letting it go. It was that smile that saved me from a day of pain because when I came home, I didn't think about anything else and in my heart I believed that her smile would get me through a lifetime of pain. So, the next day, I went back to the same spot, but instead of finding the girl with an endless smile, I found nothing, nothing at all. It was empty, so I began to ask around. It's strange. The day you realize that time is ticking down, that life could be gone before you even know it. That was that day. It never clicked that on her way home a car would hit her mother's. It never clicked that a car crash could kill her instantly. It never clicked that there was a possibility that I would never see her smile again. But it all clicked. It all clicked. My one hope in life, suddenly came to a screeching halt and that was the last time I noticed anyone's smile. It' the first and last time a smile was ever in my memory. Because if I notice people's smiles, they'll be gone.

It was also the last day I remember being sober. It was the last day of my life as we know it.

October, 18, 2000. The beginning of my hell.

It started before I even realized what happened. When your parents leave you alone for weeks at a time, leaving you to fend for yourself, you usually don't recognize what's happening. In the beginning, it wasn't my fault, it was theirs. Forcing me to grow up early, earlier than anyone should. I remember going to the grocery store, at 10 years old. That's when it started. That's when they forgot about me. Anyways, it was bound to happen. They were bound to forget one time that they had left it out once they passed out on the couch. They were bound to forget to pay the water bill, leaving me with nothing else to drink. They were bound to die. They were bound to drink themselves to death. They were bound to leave me alone, with no one, no thing. Wait, wait, that was wrong, they left me with the only thing they ever found comfort in, the only thing they ever truly loved and I'm sure you can sure has hell guess that it wasn't me...

I think I first began drinking because some strange, sick part of me thought that it would bring me closer to them. That maybe if we had a connecting factor in our lives, they wouldn't be so far away, that I could still reach them, I could still be apart of their lives. Sadly though, that never happened, sure, we had a something common between us, but they never cared about me and me drinking wouldn't ever cure that... If only I had seen it before the fact.

It was their death that impacted me the most. You never realize how much you depend on someone until they're gone. Take the girl with the smile. Could've changed my life. And for that one day, I trusted her, I trusted her smile to get me through all of the pain and suffering. I trusted my parents too, I trusted them to get me through anything, leaving me with the only concrete fact I know: Anyone you trust will only let you down.

It's nine years later. I've been continuously drunk for the past 9 years, never really living, just being. After losing both of my parents in a two month time span, life seems pretty pointless. I'm not going to take you through some sob story of the past 9 years of my life, actually I'm almost done.

I have one question of you. Yeah, you reading this letter. I feel that because you know more about me than anyone else on Earth that I deserve to ask you a question. I think that because if you've obviously made it to this point in the letter that you've cared more about me than anyone else on this planet. So, here's my question: Why'd you have to wait? Sure, sure, that might make no sense now, but later, I promise it will. I promise that every question you have in your head will be answered.

You know what? I take that back, you don't know more about me than anyone else, maybe by the end of the letter, well, maybe when you found this letter you already had but I did have someone that cared about me. I will never know why, but they did and for that I'm grateful.

She knew me. She tried to help me. She did everything she knew how to do, but it wasn't enough. It never would be enough because I never loved her. I never could love her because I would always love something more and soon she had to leave, she had to get out of my life of misery and move on. You always end up alone. No matter what, you always end up alone. I lost her. I lost the one person that cared about me, the one person who knew who I am, who I'm not, who I want to be. And I let her leave. Some would like to say that they live so that they have no regrets, I would love to say that too, but we all know that's not true. I'm not going to come up with some shit about having no regrets. My whole life is one big fucking regret, from the day I was born until me writing this letter. Everyone has regretted me. Regretted knowing me. Regretted loving me. Regretted seeing me. And I can't help that. I can't help it.

That realization hit me about 20 minutes ago. About the time I started writing this letter. I can't help that I was hated, that no one ever took the initiative to realize that I was hurting, that I was lost and insecure and just needed someone to hold me in their arms and tell me that it could be okay, that not everyone was as screwed up as I thought. That I still had a chance.

That never came though, no one came to my rescue. No one ever did, no one ever will. Well, I guess you did. But you were just a little late, weren't you? I decided on this when I began this letter, and it seemed perfect. So I'm going to tell you. You already know so much about me, so why not know why? Why not know my thoughts, my actions.

Have you ever felt a need of completion? You know the feeling, right? The need of wanting to be whole, wanting to be wanted might be better words for it. I don't think I was really "wanted." And to fill that hole was the alcohol, but after a while, it empties your soul. It dissolves it until there's nothing left, until only pain is left. It does the exact opposite of what you want it to. People say that it helps fill a void, helps protect a piece of you that you don't want to let go of. But don't believe the lies they tell you, it cuts open the void , it lets everyone see your weakness and it makes you feel more vulnerable than any other time in your life. But then there's the par t that helps you forget, that makes you not remember for a split second the void, the pain that you call your life. And I think that's why I continued so long, because maybe, just maybe those few split seconds would eventually build up into a lifetime of seconds and I'd have a new life, one without pain and suffering. One of perfection.

This is the only way I could achieve that. This is only way I could see perfection coming true. Maybe now you understand my question: Why'd you have to wait? If you're at the end of this letter now and I'm still not breathing, this question totally applies to you. Sure, sure, the front of the envelope said, READ FIRST, but how would it feel to know that I was still alive, when you began reading, that 20 bottles of alcohol take an hour to take over a humans body before causing them to go into cardiac arrest. Of course, there I was lying on the floor, surrounded, surrounded by what seemed to be hundreds of wine and beer bottles so "there was no way for him to be alive." I know what went through your head. How do I know? It happened to me. My father. I was just a little late too. I read his letter before checking on him too because "there was no way for him to be alive."

I wanted to thank you though. I wanted to thank you for reading this letter for letting me die. Because you were the first and last person to ever listen to me, to listen to my instruction. I will be thinking of you. I am thinking of you because you put me out of my misery. I don't know who you are, but to you I am eternally gratefully. Why'd you have to wait? Because I asked you to. That's the answer to the question. That's the only answer I ever wanted to hear in my life and I finally did. Sure, it's late, but it came. And that's all that matters. Maybe what I said before isn't true. Because I trusted you, I trusted you to follow my instructions and let me die and you didn't let me down. So, I'm happy that it was you and not someone else. I'm happy that you answered my cries for help. I'm happy that you believed me to be dead when you busted down my apartment room door. I'm happy that you saw the letter before finding a phone to dial 911. I'm happy that you're still reading it now. I'm happy... I'm dying happy. I'm happy because even though no one else ever did in my lifetime, you did. You, my friend, you found me.

Me

**A/N: So, this story is one of the more intense and I guess, morbid, stories I've written, but I really like it and I hope you did too. Hopefully this story will cause you to read some of my other stories. (My favorites are Goodbye, Just A Dream and When You Look Me In The Eyes.) Thank you once again for reading and if you have any suggestions for a new story, just send me a song you'd like to see written into one. Hope you enjoyed!**


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